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What is Not Yours is Not Yours pdf by Helen Oyeyemi Download

From the award-winning author of Boy, Snow, Bird and Peaces comes an enchanting collection of intertwined stories titled what is not yours is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi. The stories collected in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are linked by more than the exquisitely winding prose of their creator: Helen Oyeyemi’s ensemble cast of characters slip from the pages of their own stories only to surface in another. The reader is invited into a world of lost libraries and locked gardens, of marshlands where the drowned dead live and a city where all the clocks have stopped; students hone their skills at puppet school, the Homely Wench Society commits a guerrilla book-swap, and lovers exchange books and roses on St Jordi’s Day. In this article, you will be able to download What is not yours is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi as well as do the following amazing things:

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Summary of what is not yours is not yours pdf by Helen Oyeyemi

Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret—Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side. In “Books and Roses” one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers’ fates. In “Is Your Blood as Red as This?” an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. “‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” involves a “house of locks,” where doors can be closed only with a key—with surprising, unobservable developments. And in “If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That Don’t You Think,” a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).
 
Oyeyemi’s tales span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours captivates as it explores the many possible answers.

About the author of What is Not Yours is Not Yours – Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, along with five novels—most recently Boy, Snow, Bird, which was a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award and a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2013, she was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.

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What is not yours is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi
What is not yours is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi

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Read reviews on what is not yours is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi

Editorial reviews and praise for what is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi

Magical and show stopping.” —Elle.com
“Oyeyemi so expertly melds the everyday, the fantastic and the eternal, we have to ask if the line between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ is murkier than we imagined—or to what extent a line exists at all. . . The deeper one descends into the fabulist warrens of these stories, the more mystery and menace abound, and with each story I had the delightful and rare experience of being utterly surprised. . Transcendent.” —The New York Times Book Review

“It is, in a word, flawless. . . Oyeyemi seems to be incapable of writing anything that’s not wholly original. . . Oyeyemi manages to make the story both realistic and fantastical, and the characters are rendered with grace and compassion. . . [What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours] is a lot of things: dreamy, spellbinding, and unlike just about anything you can imagine. It’s a book that resists comparisons; Oyeyemi’s talent is as unique as it is formidable.” —NPR, Michael Schaub

“Oyeyemi’s fictional world is scintillating and eccentric, an ‘implosion of memory,’ as one character puts it.” –The New Yorker

“What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. . . boasts ambitious stories written masterfully by an adventurous author, and is another example of Oyeyemi’s skill at finding inspiration in the smallest and most ephemeral details.” —Women in the World, in association with The New York Times

“An enchanting and beautifully crafted first collection of stories, linked by the recurrence of keys. . .  Oyeyemi’s storytelling is without parallel.” —BBC.com

“Oyeyemi infuses magic into the lives of contemporary characters.” —TIME

“Dizzying, baffling, and beguiling. . . The stories in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are unruly in the best way, drawing on pre-modern modes of tale-telling (fairy tales, Boccaccio, The Arabian Nights) to show they’ve lost none of their power in the present.” —New York Magazine, Vulture

“[Oyeyemi] again shows her ability to mesmerize and enchant.” —The Washington Post

“Oyeyemi writes with mastery, sometimes keeping her prose sparse and declarative only to unleash a bounty of description and humor a sentence later.” —Entertainment Weekly

“In this collection of short stories, there are many keys that unlock many things. . .  What links them all? You’ll want to open and see.” —Cosmopolitan

“These modern fairy tales from award-winning author Helen Oyeyemi…will unlock your imagination with stories of love, loss, and. . .  keys. . .  magical, feverish, spooky, and delightful.” —Marie Claire

“The most inventive. . . story collection of the year.” –O, The Oprah Magazine

“Inventive and free-ranging. . . Combining the fantastical and the ordinary to dreamlike effect, these tales are full of tenderness, humour and strange delights.” –The Financial Times

“Summarizing Oyeyemi is like trying to tell a dream. . .  Casual and accessible at the sentence level, [these stories] are not so much experimental as deeply comfortable with the pre-narrative and proto-narrative impulses at the heart of storytelling.” —The Chicago Tribune 
 
“A potent and playful collection.” —The Boston Globe

“[U]napologetically odd—a goldmine for those who crave magical realism with surprising twists told through spectacular writing. . . Readers should take their time with each story, possibly rereading in order to glean as much of Oyeyemi’s intent and meaning as possible.”  —San Francisco Book Review
 

“These hauntingly enigmatic linked short stories attest to the author’s reputation as a stylist of the first rank… Fasten your seatbelts for the ride…  ‘What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours’ [is] a testament to her growing reputation as a contemporary master.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“Spellbinding.” —The Denver Post

“Flirting with the speculative, Oyeyemi weaves stories about living puppets and their puppet masters, old diaries not meant to be opened, ancient libraries, and secret gardens. It’s hands-down my favorite book of the year thus far.” —The Chicago Review of Books

“Think the god Hermes, that fleet-footed trickster, and perhaps you have Oyeyemi’s style in a nutshell… Oyeyemi’s infinitely nested stories seem an end in themselves, born of a limitless imagination.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Breathtakingly bold and original.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Oyeyemi demonstrates her deftness with description, of finding beauty in bizarre places. . . being granted access to these inventive and ambitious stories is a bit like receiving a gift, one full of strange and private wonders.” —Miami Herald

“Whether it’s the one about the puppetry school or the mystical diary, these nine virtuosic stories promise to mix up your reading diet with deliciously weird, thought-provoking, and fearless fare.” —Los Angeles Magazine

“Surprising, and satisfyingly so.” —Dallas Morning News

“Short stories that lead readers on secret journeys without ever leaving home.” –Pittsburgh Tribune Review

“Boldly original stories, often with fantastic elements.” –The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“In every story, surprising and beautiful phrases fall carelessly from the author’s pen. Which is a good reminder for aspiring writers: Trust that your imagination is infinite. Creativity is not like currency; spending it doesn’t leave you with less. Thinking creatively inspires more creativity. Oyeyemi shows us what can be accomplished with absolute trust in the expansiveness of one’s imagination. If you’re feeling uncertain, just dip into What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours for the proof.” –Washington Independent Review of Books

“A book that is sure to unlock the imagination of anyone who follows along.”—Refinery29

“A downright addictive read.” —Nylon

“There is no other fiction writer working in English, save Toni Morrison, whose books I look forward to more.”  —Brooklyn Magazine

“Masterful.”  —Slate

“Contains Oyeyemi’s heady trademark combination of upside down fairy tale fantasy that is as emotionally resonant as it is inventive, and the excellent details from modern life that bring her stories firmly into some magical version of our own world.” —Esquire

“A restless imagination harnessed to a smooth and propulsive prose style — Helen Oyeyemi’s fiction is a juggernaut, and she brakes for no one.” —Vulture

“Helen Oyeyemi is a literary genius, and it shows in this fantastic collection of short stories. . .  With characters that will welcome you, push you, and surprise you, Oyeyemi’s writing takes you past your expectations.” —Bustle

“Helen Oyeyemi has established herself as one of the premiere fabulists in the realm of the contemporary novel. . . [This collection] serves beauty and violence in equal measure, but is beholden to neither.” —Flavorwire

“A revelation. . . the perfect story collection.”  —Mashable

“Here is the delightful union of vivid language, compelling plot, resonant characters and profound meaning that we turn to literature to find.” —The Root

“On the page [Oyeyemi] roars. . .  Oyeyemi leaves us spellbound and begging for more of her ingenious and utterly addictive prose.” —Essence

“Helen Oyeyemi is a master at mixing magical elements with substantive topics.” —Redbook

“Both charming and unsettling, Oyeyemi’s stories will stay with you a long time.”—Bust

“A word must be said about the prose itself: spectacular.” —Electric Literature

“Stunning. . .  Highly imaginative and enchanting. . .  This collection is Oyeyemi at her best.” —Buzzfeed

“Enchanting.” —BookRiot
 
“These nine casually interlocking stories. . . overflow with the cerebral humor and fantastical plots that readers have come to expect from Oyeyemi.” Kirkus (starred)

“[Oyeyemi’s] enthusiasm for a world where witches and phantoms coexist with psychiatrists and graduate students is infectious. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours leaves readers with the captivating notion that behind every locked door lies additional mysteries.” —BookPage
  
“Page after page of macabre wit and beautiful, lingering imagery. This is a book where a busking viszla and ironic prison selfies happily co-exist. . .  If these stories are mazes, they’re ones where readers can be all too happy to find themselves lost.” —Books and Whatnot

From the Publisher

…transcendent…Oyeyemi so expertly melds the everyday, the fantastic and the eternal, we have to ask if the line between “real” and “unreal” is murkier than we imagined—or to what extent a line exists at all…The deeper one descends into the fabulist warrens of these stories, the more mystery and menace abound, and with each story I had the delightful and rare experience of being utterly surprised. A collection is, by my lights, a chance to build a universe, an overarching ecosystem. But it’s common enough to encounter a hodgepodge instead, where flashes of brilliance are undercut by clunkers. While What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is linked loosely by keys (and also by character…), the collection is even more urgently united by the author’s playful, inventive sensibility. Oyeyemi has created a universe that dazzles and wounds.

The New York Times Book Review – Laura van den Berg

01/11/2016
In her first story collection, Oyeyemi (Boy, Snow, Bird) conjures present-day Europe, made enticingly strange by undercurrents of magic, and populated by ghosts, sentient puppets, and possible witches alongside middle-aged psychiatrists, tyrants, and feminist undergrads. Loosely linked by a theme of keys and doors, many of the stories feature female protagonists discovering their sexuality or coming into their own. In “ ‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea,” 14-year-old Aisha and Tyche, her father’s colleague, send the goddess Hecate to torment teen idol Matyas Füst for beating a prostitute; in “A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society,” Aisha’s sister, Dayang, is a member of a women’s society at Cambridge University, waging a good-natured war against the Bettencourt Society, a rival all-male club. “Drownings” is an allegorical tale set in a dictatorship where citizens are “drowned in the gray marshlands deep in the heart of the country.” “Dornicka and the St. Martin’s Day Goose” is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, draw on Eastern European history and lore. And in “Presence,” a married couple in London undergo a pharmaceutical trial causing them to hallucinate a son they never had, a “makeless” boy. Readers will be drawn to Oyeyemi’s contagious enthusiasm for her characters and deep sympathy for their unrequited or thwarted loves. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

11/01/2015
The prolific and immensely talented Oyeyemi presents fantastical short stories that all revolve around a key, whether literal or metaphorical. (Prepub Alert, 9/15/15)

Library Journal

09/01/2016
Keys are central to the short stories in this collection; they can either open or lock away something of significance for the characters. All of the tales are intertwined with themes of search and possible retrieval, which will draw young adult readers into worlds that are sometimes secretive and sometimes elusive; they will be able to easily identify with that search of self that so often comes with adolescence. The characters are relatable to YA readers, from the young woman looking for her long-lost mother and heritage to the hopeful music fan wanting to find the best in a broken artist. These worlds and characters are complex and passionate, and readers will find themselves longing for more once the stories end. Even though the settings are quite strange (a locked library, a city of stopped clocks, a marshland of the drowned), there’s a complexity here and the brilliant prose gently pulls readers in, encouraging them to identify with the characters. VERDICT A must-add to libraries, this work will appeal to fans of literary fiction.—April Sanders, Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL

School Library Journal

★ 2015-12-22
These nine casually interlocking stories, set in a familiar yet surreal contemporary world, overflow with the cerebral humor and fantastical plots that readers have come to expect from Oyeyemi (Boy Snow Bird, 2014). The opener, “Books and Roses,” sets the tone: stories within stories and a fittingly cockeyed view of Gaudi’s architecture as two women in Barcelona share their experiences in abandonment while searching for the loved ones who left them behind. Most of the volume takes place in England, with nods toward Eastern Europe. In ” ‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea,” weight-loss clinician Anton becomes increasingly involved in raising his boyfriend’s two adolescent daughters, Aisha and Dayang, while fishsitting for a traveling friend. The story seems straightforward until Anton’s friend falls in long-distance love with a mystery woman who’s entered his locked house without a key and Anton’s co-worker Tyche helps Aisha recover from a crisis in disillusionment by casting a spell from the Greek goddess Hecate. Tyche returns as a student puppeteer in “Is Your Blood as Red as This?,” which layers creepy echoes of Pinocchio onto realistically genuine adolescent sexual confusion. Readers realize Tyche’s fellow students Radha and Myrna have ended up sexually happy-ever-after when they pop up in “Presence” to lend their shared apartment to a psychologist so she and her grief-counselor husband can carry out the ironically eponymous science-fiction experiment that forces the psychologist to accept the absences in her life. While Aisha appears as a filmmaker employing puppets in “Freddy Barrandov Checks…In?,” Dayang stars as ingénue in “A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society,” a post-feminist romantic comedy about warring men’s and women’s societies at Cambridge. Several stories are pure fairy tale, like “Dornicka and the St. Martin’s Day Goose,” a twisted take on “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Drownings,” in which good intentions defeat a murderous tyrant. For all the portentous metaphors (keys and locks appear in every story) and all the convoluted and fabulist narrations, Oyeyemi’s stories are often cheerfully sentimental. -Kirkus Reviews

Customer reviews on barnes and noble for what is not yours is not yours

mdemanatee

4 out of 5 stars.

6 years ago  

A Doomed Romance Set Against The Romantic And Mysterious City Of B …

A doomed romance set against the romantic and mysterious city of Barcelona. Fans of a cultish pop star dealing with the fallout of his bad behavior. A student puppeteer–where there’s more to the puppets than meets the eye. All of Oyeyemi’s stories revolve around locks and keys. some of the stories are tangentially related. All are captivating.

Those of you that know me, or having been reading my ramblings here for a bit, know I generally prefer my short stories with a touch of the odd. Oyeyemi delivers. Like with her novels Boy, Snow, Bird and White is for Witching (and presumably also the ones I have not yet read), Oyeyemi takes the ordinary and spins a fairy tale. Or she adds that one odd element that makes all the difference. These stories live up to that. If you like Karen Russell or Kelly Link (who was just a Pulitzer finalist!), this will be right up your alley.

With her touches of magic, Oyeyemi manages to dig deep, and all of her stories ring of truth. One of the stories that stood out to me most involved two teenagers dealing with he fallout of the pop star they idolized beating a woman. The tone feels extra sinister as if these girls were victims themselves. And, in many ways they were. It was a look at the fall of a teen idol that did not shame the teens, and I loved that. It was analysis of how we worship, and forgive, “stars” seemingly ripped right from the headlines.

The marketing of this one led me to believe these stories were more interconnected than I found them–though that they are connected is undeniable. There also could have been things I missed. Regardless, pick this one up.

Anonymous
out of 5 stars.
5 years ago  

I Bought This Based On The Great Reviews. It Started Out With An I …

I bought this based on the great reviews. It started out with an interesting story, but went downhill from there. By the time I got to the puppet story, which was way too long and overly detailed, I had no interest in any of the characters. I thought the writer was pretentious and tried too hard to make the ordinary seem mystical. I can find nothing to recommend this book. Unless you really love the short story format, skip this one.

Reviews from customers on Amazon

Richard Weems

2.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfying movement

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2019

Verified Purchase

The shame for me here is that I like the vision behind Oyeyemi’s writing. Her worlds are broad, and the scope of characters are what we need to see more of in a publishing world that is still very patriarchal and ghastly white. But alas, the stories themselves often deflated my interests rather than rile them up, meandering and ending up somewhere different to be sure, but without a pang of retroactive recognition, of seeing the road as a whole after the passage is complete. Rather, that road remains occluded and vague, and thus the journey feels more like the passage of time than an accomplishment. The first stories, read weeks before finally finishing this book, haven’t come back to me in a satisfying way.

Part of the concern here might be a heavy reliance on speculative elements. I am by no means a staunch realist, but I do think any story needs to set its terms in some way, whether those terms be familiar or fantastic. And either choice should intensify the story in some way. So in a story like “is your blood as red as this?” which starts out from the perspective of a young girl who pursues her crush into puppetry school, only to suddenly shift to a perspective from a puppet, despite the groundwork Oyeyemi lays along the way in suggesting how puppets have their own personalities, I felt the shift more obligatory towards speculative writing than an intensification of the dramatic tension. The result was my earlier comment about deflation. Even if we were to read the puppet’s perspective as being a psychological filter of a previous character, the move only served to undermine all the interest the first section had built up in me.

Lastly I’ll just point out a pet peeve this book roiled up in me. This may not be attributable to the author but the book company, but still—the jokingly WEAK attempt at making these stories interconnect on the back cover only smacked of the book industry’s perpetual fear of short story collections, that such things can’t sell, a self-fulfilling prophecy which is just a boorish superstition.

“Greg Adkins”

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and Haunting

Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2018

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I’m not entirely certain what I expected out of this book. I’m not even entirely certain how I *got hold* of this book, to be honest–I just ran across it one day while cleaning out my kindle. I suppose I must have bought it a few months back after reading a review somewhere, or maybe because the title appealed, though I don’t remember doing that at all. Which is entirely apropos to the stories here: each one involve moments of intense strangeness, often reported with a comedic banality. Oyeyemi’s stories exist in a kind of exquisite Lagrange point between fantasy and outright surrealism, balancing there delicately without seeming to put much effort into the act, focusing instead on their characters and their often-detached emotional experiences. The collection is loosely linked by keys (they show up a lot), characters (who often move on from one story to pop up in another), and in all cases, by the nature and power of storytelling.

The first trio of stories–about an orphan girl who is left a mysterious key and begins to collect the stories of others like her; about a step-father who becomes increasingly perturbed by his step-daughter’s worship (or is it hatred?) of a pop singer accused of sexual misconduct; and about a girl who falls in love with another girl at a party, and this leads her unexpectedly to become a puppeteer whose puppet houses the spirit of a grand old puppet master–are probably my favorite. Lyrical and a little haunting, they weave a kind of spell around you as you read. The increasing weirdness of their worlds sneak up on you first in tiny eddies, then crash over you in great unexpected waves. Yet these stories are all so firmly grounded in their characters that it doesn’t ever dislodge your attention, only draws you further under. And all of them end on perfectly unexpected notes, a little final surprise that leaves your scratching your head, maybe, or flipping back to earlier pages to reread a passage that might have meant something entirely different from what you thought it did.

As the collection goes on the thematic currents make themselves more obvious–interests in non-traditional relationships, feminism, the talismanic properties of books, why we keep secrets that are essentially meaningless to anyone who is not ourselves. And if it slows down a little, if the shine of Oyeyemi’s language wears off a tad, if the stories hold you a little less toward the end than they did at the beginning… well, it’s a price well worth paying. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a book of short stories as much as I did this one. It makes me eager and wary of her novels in equal measure: how can they possible prove themselves equal to the magnificent grace of her shorter writing?

ladysupermarket

5.0 out of 5 stars Such a wonderful surprise

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2018

Verified Purchase

Half of the time I was reading I was confused and puzzled.
The other half I was amazed.

The fact that these very VERY complex stories are written and somehow are all interconnected is marvelous. And the stories are also very good within themselves. They have stuck with me for days now and I remember them quite clearly ( that is not so often with bad books). This book is one for re-reading and being marveled again.

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